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A quantum object-oriented language based on featherweight java

Samuel da Silva Feitosa

Published Mar 4, 2016• 0 citations

Abstract

With the approaching end of Moore’s Law, where will not be possible to improve the capacity of silicon based processors, the quantum computing appear to be a good choice to provide a new era of computation. Quantum computing can be understood as the art of transform information encoded in the state of a quantum physical system. This encoding is through the quantum bits (qubits), which can be on superposition or entangled states, enabling to explore the property called quantum parallelism. In this work is discussed the creation of a quantum programming language implementing the object-oriented paradigm (OO), allowing manipulation of classes and objects, where the quantum effects are handled through a monadic approach, extending the Featherweight Java (FJ) proposal. This language is formally defined through the operational semantics, which allow the implementation in any language that provides closures. That language formalization enables us to create an interpreter, implementing the steps of lexical, syntactic and semantic analysis, focusing in the type system to embedded quantum computing concepts in a classical language. Several examples are provided in the text, showing ways to handle the monadic layer in order to perform transformations in quantum information.

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To help the understanding and development of quantum algorithms there is an effort focused on the investigation of new semantic models and programming languages for quantum computing. Researchers in computer science have the challenge of deve loping programming languages to support the creation, analysis, modeling and simulation of high level quantum algorithms. Based on previous works that use monads inside the programming language Haskell to elegantly explain the odd characteristics of quantum computation (like superposition and entanglement), in this work we present a monadic Java library for quantum programming. We use the extension of the programming language Java called BGGA Closure, that allow the manipulation of anonymous functions (closures) inside Java. We exemplify the use of the library with an implementation of the Toffoli quantum circuit.

Many production quantum programming languages represent hybrid quantum computations by extending a classical base language with a quantum effect, where qubits are addressed by reference, and quantum operations are understood to mutate some external quantum state. However, the semantics of this view of quantum computation remains underdeveloped, especially when the language allows mid-circuit measurements and non-termination. In this work, we provide a general method for building denotational semantics for such languages, by defining the quantum orchestra monad, which precisely captures this style of quantum effect. The monad has a concrete presentation, being based on the formalism of quantum instruments, a common tool in quantum information theory for capturing the action of a quantum process along with its classical outcomes. It acts on the category DCPO, and so enables the interpretation of divergent hybrid programs. The quantum orchestra monad serves as a natural extension of both the classical state monad and the probabilistic powerdomain monad. We investigate some of the subtleties present when trying to naïvely extend these definitions to the quantum non-commutative case.

To help the understanding and development of quantum algorithms there is an effort focused on the investigation of new semantic models and programming languages for quantum computing. Researchers in computer science have the challenge of developing programming languages with high level abstraction of quantum algorithms. Based on previous works that use monads inside the programming language Haskell to elegantly explain the odd characteristics of quantum computation (like superposition), in this work we present a monadic Java library for quantum programming using the new features of anonymous functions (closures) available in the developers preview of the JDK 8 (Java Development Kit).

Quantum computing is an emerging technology that, currently, has the challenge of developing programming languages, according to the rules of quantum mechanics, to support the creation, analysis, modeling and simulation of high-level quantum algorithms. Particularly, the focus is on the investigation of new semantic models to develop programming languages for quantum computing. In this context, one alternative is to use the semantic model of monads and arrows that abstracts both pure and mixed quantum states and also can express measures. This model however, was originally implemented as a library for the functional language Haskell, which not every programmer is family. This way, this study aims to provide a universal tool for high-level quantum programming, providing a library for Java. This library was implemented using the new features of closures present in the version 8 of the JDK (Java Development Kit), already available in developers preview. In addition, we present a specific syntax for the library to facilitate the development of quantum algorithms with a clearly structured notation. This syntax is described in a notation similar to the do-notation of Haskell and operates in conjunction with a parser implemented by ANTLR tool.

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